One of the problems with moving to alternative fuels to power our vehicles is the availability of refuelling points. Current refuelling stations only cater for the 99.9% of us who drive conventional cars. If you want to drive a car powered by hydrogen or electric you need to plan ahead and only do journeys where compatible refuelling points exist. That severely limits both the range and practicality of such vehicles.

The availability of these alternative refuelling points is going to grow over time and the UK looks set to be one of the first areas to put investment into providing them. The M4 in Wales is becoming a “hydrogen highway” with investment being made to develop both hydrogen fuel systems and create an infrastructure to support alternative fuel vehicles.

By 2015 it is hoped the M4 will have full support for green energy cars. Pulling into a station on the highway will allow cars to be plugged-in and topped up with electric and hydrogen. Support is also planned for bio-methane and compressed natural gas.

The move has be welcomed by environmental groups, but with the warning that alternative energy needs to be produced as cleanly as possible too.

Infrastructure is key to any new fuels we use to power our cars. The new vehicles carrying fuel cells will not be capable of thousands of miles without a top up so we need refuelling points on the same scale as current stations.

I’m sure the energy companies who run most of these stations will embrace new fuel points as long as they see a profit in it. Governments around the world also want to ensure we maintain a system where fuel can be taxed. Therefore the most logical way forward is to introduce alternative fuel points in existing stations. Then, over the coming decades, slowly phase out the old fuel pumps as their use scales down.

We still have a long way to go, and a lot of investment to be made, before people are all driving around in electric powered cars. There are also a number of questions still to be answered about just how green these new fuel solutions are. We may not be producing emissions from every car in the future, but we will be producing a lot more electricity to power them. New fuel systems also have different components to recycle when these vehicles reach the end of their lives. That energy needs to come from renewable sources and those components recycled or disposed of responsibly.